Joe Galloway is certainly a fine reporter, but one of the problems in the USA has been that the MSM [Main Stream Media] has been reluctant to call bull-shit on Shrub's policies. It has been interesting that some small town newspapers started to question what was going on before the national newspapers.

There are a couple of interesting comments in Galloway's article; the first is obvious, the US military is at full stretch and about to break. Implied in this comment and what there is increasing talk about here is that a draft is necessary. My own opinion is that all a surge will achieve is provide more US targets for the Iraqis and increase theatre danger by placing more troops at the end of a 600 mile supply line from the secure US bases in Kuwait. What is surprisingly absent from the article is that the Generals are now in revolt with Bush; even General Abizaid publicly crticised the proposed surge and is now retiring as Commander US Forces Iraq.

The second comment in the article which is a little more subtle especially for anyone in the UK is the reference to "Neocon Princes of Darkness". In the background behind Rumsfled, Bush and Cheney have been some shadowy figures who were responsible for plotting and lying the US into this idiocy. The names of these individuals are pretty well known; Cambone, Perle, Bolton, Wolfowitz, Feith, Negroponte et al. What the MSM is still reluctant to do is to link these individuals to the Israelis. It is impossible to convey adequately the extent to which US foreign policy has been subjugated to the interests of Israel.

GCM

The second comment in the article which is a little more subtle especially for anyone in the UK is the reference to "Neocon Princes of Darkness". In the background behind Rumsfled, Bush and Cheney have been some shadowy figures who were responsible for plotting and lying the US into this idiocy. The names of these individuals are pretty well known; Cambone, Perle, Bolton, Wolfowitz, Feith, Negroponte et al. What the MSM is still reluctant to do is to link these individuals to the Israelis. It is impossible to convey adequately the extent to which US foreign policy has been subjugated to the interests of Israel.

I'm not surprised the media don't want to highlight any links with Isreal. I'm sure non of them want to risk being labeled anti-semitic, which tends to happen when one criticises anything Isreal do.
That said Bergen, what are the links between the Isreal and the American administration?

ADC

I'm not surprised the media don't want to highlight any links with Isreal. I'm sure non of them want to risk being labeled anti-semitic, which tends to happen when one criticises anything Isreal do.
That said Bergen, what are the links between the Isreal and the American administration?[/quote]

A peculiarity of US government is just how powerful and influential lobbying groups are. They have multi-million dollar budgets and contribute millions of dollars to congressmen to buy support. Think about the Big Oil Lobby or the Drug Companies Lobby or even the Tobacco Lobby. These lobbies shape and direct a lot of US policy but they all pale into insignificance when compared to AIPAC [American Israeli Public Affairs Committee] and it's offshoot WINEP.

AIPAC is the single most powerful lobby in US history and lobbies exclusively for a foreign [Israeli] government.

The Neocon princes of darkness are all US citizens with close ties to Israel and to AIPAC. They have infiltrated the US government to the highest levels and control a lot of foreign policy and they help shape it to the advantage of Israel.

Let's concentrate on Richard Perle. Despite being a top US official he is also a leader of JINSA [Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs] and an advisor to the right-wing Israeli Likud party. He has a proven history of passing US intelligence to the Israeli's and in the 1990's was writing Likud policy for the Israeli's that included military intervention in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Jordan. Basically to use US muscle to further Israeli policies.

He had extremely close ties with Conrad Black who controlled 400 newspapers worldwide including The Daily Telegraph, The Chicago Sun-Times, Sydney Morning-Herald and the Jerusalem Post. All right-wing apologists for Israeli policy. Ever wonder why a home-made Katyusha rocket that kills 1 Israeli in Haifa gets banner headlines and an Israeli air-strike that kills 20 Palestinian women and children in Gaza never makes the news?

The neocons have also been highly active in undermining any US-Palestinian peace negotiations and for using United States vetoes in the UN Security Council to prevent any condemnation of Israel or it's policies.

The USA has used it's veto hundreds of times in this way. Lot's of the votes were for human-rights violations but some of them are truly amazing:

Even more amazing is the incident of the USS Liberty when the Israeli's killed 34 USN sailors [www.ussliberty.org]. This was a monumental cover-up.

The neocon tentacles have spread through all levels of the US government - once they were in a position to do so the neocons hired other neocons. Like Michael Ledeen, a prime instigator of the war. He was hired by Perle and installed in the Department of Defence as a consultant on terrorism. He was hired despite being listed by the CIA as an agent of influence of a foreign government [Israel]. He eventually left after being suspected of transmitting classified files to Israel.

One of the other things that is suppressed is the amount of Israeli intelligence activity directed against the United States and how much US weapons technology the Israeli's have sold to Russia and China.

It is a scandal of the highest order and it would not surprise me if one day, if the USA ever gets it's act together, these people face trials for treason.

Britain was sucked into this by Bliar and the Bliarites and he is now caught between a rock and a hard place. The war in Iraq is a proxy war being fought by the USA and UK to further the expansionist ambitions and Middle-East interests of Israel.

GCM

Yes, I was quite surprised that didn't seem to create anything more than a ripple at the UN.

O.K. So if this is all going on and the mainstream media are keeping their heads down, who is reporting on these events? In an un-biased and accurate manner, that is and not just trying to push their own poitical agenda.

ADC

Yes, I was quite surprised that didn't seem to create anything more than a ripple at the UN.

O.K. So if this is all going on and the mainstream media are keeping their heads down, who is reporting on these events? In an un-biased and accurate manner, that is and not just trying to push their own poitical agenda.

LPB - Good question and a hard one to answer without writing a book. The pro-Israeli lobby in the USA [and indeed all western countries] is empowered by several things:

i. The holocaust industry. The collective western guilt is played brilliantly by the Israelis and Germany in particular is in permanent moral debt. Why there is no guilt over the forced evictions of Palestinians from their own lands and abuse and victimisation during 27 years of Israeli occupation is another story. Guilt, in short, is easily managed, and can be brought into play effectively by those powerful enough to mobilise it for their own purposes.

ii. The use of Israel as a strategic asset inside the middle-east. The USA has used Israel as a surrogate in covert support of regimes in Iran, Haiti, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, South Africa and Zaire. When the full history of the torture in Iraq is finally revealed it will be seen that the USA was using IDF interrogators inside Iraq.

iii. AIPAC itself is not a PAC [Political Action Committee] and therefore is able to avoid any scrutiny. It does however support around 60 PAC's which all lobby and raise funds on behalf of Israel. The power of the Israeli lobbies is extraordinary and the power is used to keep a lid on any public debate or exposure of Israeli abuses. There are about 50,000 AIPAC supporters in the USA and several hundred thousand others who are encouraged to write letters, make phone calls to editors and reporters whenever Israeli actions are being exposed. It is a tremendous flak machine that greatly constrains free speech and debate. When one of the officers of the USS Liberty wrote a book about the Israeli attack on his ship he was heckled every time he appeared in public and accused of being anti-semitic and when he appeared on TV the stations were inundated with threatening phone-calls and abuse.

I refer to the USS Liberty a lot because the power of the Israeli lobby was stunningly blatant. The skipper was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor..............but it was done secretly in a naval dockyard with no publicity. No-one wanted to highlight that 34 US sailors had been killed and 121 wounded by the Israelis in order to prevent intelligence compromising the Israeli attack and annexation of the Golan Heights which took place the next day.

There are several reporters who do report what is really going on and funnily enough the debate within Israel is not as constrained nor criticism of the Zionists as strangled as in the west. An Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, can usually be open and truthful about the facts and about what the Zionists are up to in the West Bank and Gaza.

The bottom-line is that all the massacres of civilians committed by the Israelis are either not reported or under-reported. Think of how the Israelis shelled Palestinian families picnicking on the beach and then denied the evidence, how they are presently blocking the UN investigation of the Beit Hanoun massacre by preventing UN access, how they dropped 36 x 155mm artillery shells on the Fijian UN compound at Qana killing 100 women and children, the massacres of Shatilla and the ongoing killing of children on a daily basis. Every UN condemnation of Israel's actions has been vetoed in the UN by the USA. Israel acts with impunity using the finest weapons that the US tax-payer can buy.

Israel has refused to sign the NPT.....Nuclear Proliferation Treaty.......Iran has.

Israel refuses to allow any IEAE inspection of its nuclear facilities........Iran allows them.

Israel has threatened it's neigbours with nuclear weapons and has exploded an atmospheric atomic device in the South Atlantic.

The list goes on and on but I guess that what we have to do is look beyond the face value of what is reported especially where Israel is concerned.

MIA

It just goes to show that if you have the money to influence --ie Lobby and semi control the media how the world can be manipulated.

I think in Iraq also a previous post pointed out that the grand 'reconstruction' of Iraq after the invasion by US and UK forces
is all controlled by US big business .
There's big bucks being earned out there

ADC

It just goes to show that if you have the money to influence --ie Lobby and semi control the media how the world can be manipulated.

I think in Iraq also a previous post pointed out that the grand 'reconstruction' of Iraq after the invasion by US and UK forces
is all controlled by US big business .
There's big bucks being earned out there

Greenie - It's a lot worse than most people think. The re-construction and oil contracts were being awarded in early 2002 when the Bushistas were still telling the world that war with Iraq would be a last resort. Untold billions of dollars are missing.

Darth Cheney's company, Halliburton was awarded a small ($1.9 million) LOGCAP contract in 2002 to draw up contingency plans for the take-over of the Iraqi oil-fields. All Halliburton contract awards have violated the requirements of Federal Procurement Regulations and the objections of career officials have been constantly overruled.

The Pentagon awarded this contract in the full knowledge that whichever firm was awarded it would also be awarded the follow-on R.I.O. contract worth a staggering $7 billion. [RIO = Restore Iraqi Oil]. Very unusually this award was made by a political appointee in order to avoid any scrutiny by federal civil servants or possible whistle-blowing. The US General Accounting Office later found that this contract was not awarded within legal requirements.

The political appointee who awarded the contract was Michael Mobbs who had been placed in position by Douglas Feith a staunch supporter of AIPAC [anyone seeing patterns here?].

The US Army Corps of Engineers fought the award of this 5 year no-bid contract to Halliburton tooth and nail. The chief contracting official at the Corps, a woman named Bunnatine Greenhouse was fired for objecting to the contract which she called highly disturbing because it was made in secret and with no reference to any other potential contractor.

Remember this is one contract amongst hundreds made with little scrutiny and even less oversight.

In January Senator Henry Waxman will begin his investigations into these scandals and multiple prosecutions are sure to follow.

The problem that the United States now has is not how many enemies it has in the world but how few friends it has.